


All That Could've Been

by Brillador



Series: Golden Quartet (Next Generation) [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, First Love, Gidrick, M/M, Multi, Rumbelle - Freeform, Teen Romance, Young Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 03:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11282532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brillador/pseuds/Brillador
Summary: Series of one-shots with Gideon Gold in various romantic relationships. Set in the Golden Quartet verse (canon-divergent from season 5; Gideon has a little sister), but each one-shot can be considered its own verse. Rating might go up for explicit sexuality in later installments.





	All That Could've Been

There was no insurmountable reason why Gideon felt like his heart was clogging his throat. There was no reason not to hope for the best outcome. No matter how much his optimism wanted to triumph, his fears over disappointing those he loved most were doing a fine job choking him and paralyzing him across the street from the pawnshop.

“You’re sure it wouldn’t help if I went in with you?” Roderick asked.

The need to answer his boyfriend’s question—wow. His boyfriend. He really had a . . . right. Roderick deserved a cogent answer. Gideon swallowed at the risk of spraining a neck muscle.

“It’s okay. It’s . . . it’s not just about us. Well, you _are_ a big part of it, but—”

“I get it,” Roderick said in that gentle way that always made Gideon’s heart skip. “This is about them understanding who you are. That’s hard enough without having to tell them you’re actually dating someone, too.”

The playful inflection he tossed in at the end stirred a spark of humor over the situation. Gideon laughed quietly. “I’d be a little nervous just telling them that.”

“Right. But, Gid, if you do need me at all for support, I’ll be right here.”

Roderick slipped his fingers against Gideon’s palm. Out on the sidewalk, even in the shadow of the library’s east side, the boys agreed not to give away any overt signs of affection. In the evening gloom, they allowed some small contact that still fizzled their nerves. That was enough. They didn’t need nosy attention from passersby. No, they weren’t expecting torches and pitchforks. It still wasn’t common, though, this kind of love. So many stories they’d heard and read were about maidens and knights meeting and falling in love. Rarely came the alternatives that offered them encouragement.

_That’s not what’s at stake_ , Gideon reminded himself. If all the world disapproved of what he felt for Roderick, and what Roderick felt for him, to hell with the world. He just couldn’t turn that same rebellious, stalwart spirit on the opinion of his parents.

A squeeze to the hand bolstered his courage. Gideon smiled brokenly at Roderick, then crossed the street.

He knew Mum was helping Papa close the shop as usual. He’d grown to suspect that there was more going on beyond a woman assisting her husband with his job. Many a visit to the shop, from ages seven to sixteen, had put Gideon in the position of seeing his parents standing close or looking at each other in a way that made him want to turn around and give them privacy, and spare his eyes of something he wouldn’t be able to un-see. As luck would have it, today he opened the door to what appeared to be an empty establishment. The lights were still on. The floor looked freshly swept. Gideon took a few careful steps toward the register. Was it worth calling out? If no one answered, that gave him permission to check the backroom where either no one was present or his father was so deeply engrossed in fixing or repairing something to miss the tinkling bell over the door and his growing son’s footfalls. And his mother could be lost in a book. Perfectly in character. Definitely nothing else.

“Papa? Mum? Anyone here?”

The muted creaking of floorboards. Gideon stood still to be sure he wasn’t the cause. His motionless patience was rewarded. Rumplestiltskin snapped opened the curtain and looked at Gideon with a trace of panic.

“Gideon! I, uh . . . this is a nice surprise.”

Gideon didn’t know whether to look down in embarrassment or give in to the giggle that wanted to leap out of his chest. He folded his lips inward to collect himself. “Is Mum here?”

As if _he_ were the teenager caught doing something inappropriate, his father shifted his eyes, then glanced behind him. Then he pulled on a deflecting smile. “Yeah, she is. Did you need to speak with her?”

“To both of you, actually. If this is a good time.”

“Of course, son!”

Belle came out while smoothing down her blouse and retucking it into her skirt. She looked more relaxed even with the noticeable flush in her cheeks. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said in that effulgent way that Gideon wanted to run into and wrap around himself like a fuzzy blanket.

“Hey.” He cleared his throat. “Um, I have something kind of important to tell you.”

An air of concern enveloped his parents. No getting around that, even though he didn’t want to worry them. Not unless they thought there was something to worry about. _Just get it over with_ , he thought. Heat flashed through him, as if a hot spotlight had switched on.

“Is something wrong?” Belle asked.

“No,” he said. “It really isn’t. Not to me. I just . . . I hope that you’ll approve.”

He’d tried to plan what he wanted to say. Roderick had advised him to just talk from the heart. The right words would come if he trusted himself. Easier said, but now Gideon was sure if he _had_ prepared a speech, he would’ve forgotten ninety percent of it. His mother and father, two of the most loving people he knew, wore perturbed expressions that only made him more nervous.

“I . . . I wanted to . . . I need to tell you that . . . there’s someone I . . . no, no, I didn’t want to start with that. But maybe I should. Um . . .”

“Gideon,” his mother jumped in, “you can trust us. Say whatever is on your mind.”

Rumple nodded, agreeing and encouraging him to continue.

So Gideon did. He thought of Roderick waiting for him across the street. And in that moment, everything he wanted to explain to his parents—that he liked boys, that this was a part of who he was and he had to embrace it—didn’t really matter. Roderick mattered.

“I’m . . . I have feelings for someone.” He must’ve been as red as a cooked lobster.

Both his parents’ eyebrows jumped. Belle’s eyes lit up like bulbs. “Oh, Gideon, that’s wonderful!”

“It is?” Gideon asked.

“It is?” Rumple muttered.

Belle glared at him, then sent a kinder look to Gideon. “It _is_. Being in love is a beautiful experience.”

“Oh. I don’t know . . .” It seemed too soon to say he was in love. “In love” sounded so grand and important. He couldn’t imagine the feeling of _being in love_ as this soft, cautious yet true thing he felt for Roderick. Maybe this was how it started.

“Does this person return your feelings?” Rumple asked.

“Yes,” Gideon said. It was the one thing he was sure of. “He does.”

Up went those eyebrows again. His parents said in perfect synchronicity that would’ve made Gideon laugh if his nerves weren’t such a mess, “He?”

“Yes, _he_. And before I tell you who he is, Papa, please, please, _please_ promise me you won’t try to scare him off.”

Belle regarded Rumple with an expectant gaze. She wanted the same confirmation.

His father had the audacity to act offended as his family stared him down. He touched his chest. “You think I would do such a thing?”

“Yes,” said Gideon and Belle.

“All right,” Rumple said, “maybe I would. But you have my word, son. Who is this person whose heart I will _not_ crush if he crushes yours?”

“He . . . Papa.”

“What?”

Gideon sighed. “It’s Roderick.”

The creases that appeared between Belle’s brows, then Rumple’s, sent a fearful tingled through Gideon’s fingertips. Then understanding dawned as his parents looked at each other. They weren’t disapproving. They were confused.

“Who is that, again?” Belle asked, an apology within a question.

“Roderick!” Not quite what Gideon expected to be outraged about, but there it was. “From the children’s home! He’s one of the kids you saved from the Dark Realm! I lent him _Her Handsome Hero_!”

“Oh, yes!” Belle held up her hands, as though welcoming back this lost memory of a boy she’d met years ago. “The boy with the poofy hair, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Quite a blithe description. Roderick’s hair was thickly layered, warm and soft. Gideon warned himself not to remember how it felt in his fingers when they shared their first serious kiss. He’d forget himself in front of his parents.

“What’s he doing now?” Belle asked.

He nearly let slip that right now Roderick was waiting across the street for Gideon to tell him if they had to continue their meet-ups in secret. At the last second, Gideon realized what his mother meant.

“He goes to my school, but he also works odd jobs around town. And he’s been volunteering at the home to help Tinkerbell and the other fairies.”

Rumple tilted his chin with interest. “Is he the one who recruited you to volunteer there?”

“It was my suggestion,” Belle said. “He needed to earn community service hours for school, remember?”

Gideon certainly did. He’d long surpassed the requirement, but he still spend a few hours after school and during the weekend at the Sorcerer’s Mansion, as the kids had come to call it. Not because of any connection to the renowned Sorcerer Merlin, despite the speculations of adults. No, the children whom the Black Fairy had imprisoned and enslaved in the Dark Realm until their rescue had believed that the mansion belonged to Rumplestiltskin, since he was the one to access a magic door inside the house to the Dark Realm. He hadn’t gone there alone, but given the _personal_ circumstances surrounding the rescue, the children saw him take down the Black Fairy. Thus, they regarded him as their savior. Gideon wondered if Emma had minded it at the time.

The mansion, converted into a home for the orphaned children, was equipped with protective magic and some secret rooms. Now that he was training under his father’s tutelage, Gideon had added spell maintenance to his volunteer duties. On his first day, Tinkerbell has assigned him to Roderick to learn the ropes. Roderick picked up on Gideon’s interest in the library, so he showed him how to open the hidden doorway. Inside the library, they spent almost two hours exploring the shelves, reorganizing them, and discussing which books they knew and which sounded interesting. Gideon had known Roderick through school, but that library was where their friendship began. It prompted Gideon to bring _Her Handsome Hero_ on his next visit and pique Roderick’s interest. Roderick liked it so much he photocopied excerpts (with Belle’s permission) to share with the other children.

“But I take it,” Rumple continued, “that you and he became better acquainted through your work together.”

“Right,” said Gideon.

“So, how long has the . . . the romantic . . . _stuff_ been going on?”

Gideon inhaled slowly, giving himself time to think in logistics and diplomacy. “I guess . . . maybe a month?” Complete honesty compelled him to say longer, but that would’ve accounted for all the months of pining that he was only half aware of. It was easiest to start from the day Roderick asked if it was weird or silly that he imagined Gideon as the fictional Gideon from _Her Handsome Hero_ , the very character Belle named him after. Not that he pictured his friend as more like the character—a fearless warrior who refused to back down from powerful evil forces—but that he couldn’t picture the character with anyone’s face besides Gideon’s.

Gideon felt like he’d won a prize of a lifetime hearing that. Then, of course, that led to one of the cheesiest declarations he ever made.

“It would be kind of weird to hear that from someone else,” he said. “But not you.”

“Why?” Roderick asked.

“I guess if I wanted one person to think of me as a great hero, it would be you.” 

An unspoken urge ballooned between them. Then shy smiles, then a cautious hand—Roderick’s—reaching for another—Gideon’s. Nervous gulps. Long, searching stares. A slow migration toward one another, inches feeling like miles. In the end, Gideon moved in first, only because if someone didn’t do something he’d run away or burst a capillary. But Roderick was the first to close his lips over Gideon’s.

“A month?” Rumple began to show distress. “And you’re only telling us now?”

Gideon flushed over the past and the present.

“Sweetheart,” said Belle, “we’re not angry, but why did you keep this a secret? From us? We’re your parents.”

“How was I supposed to tell you?” How was he even able to tell them now? His whole body itched to poof out of here. “I didn’t know if you’d . . . if you’d be upset.”

Belle folded her arms. “Well, I _am_ upset that you weren’t honest about what’s been going on.”

Rumple spared a wordless moment to unknot all the words that Gideon couldn’t for himself. Gideon looked at his father, unsure if he was facing an ally or an executioner. When the old man met his eye, pained empathy furrowed Rumple’s brow.

“I think I know what you mean. You were afraid we wouldn’t approve of you dating a boy.”

Belle flashed Rumple an alarmed glance. She was close to horrified when she turned to Gideon. “Did you really think that?”

Gideon shrugged his shoulders like a child stuck between remorse for a bad deed and the belief that he was in the right. “It’s not like Gideon from the book ever did that. It’s not like any man in Henry’s book has had a happy ending with another guy.”

For someone in heels, Belle was remarkably speedy. In a just a few, brisk strides, she trapped Gideon in a fierce hug. After a few breathless seconds of squeezing him, she pulled back to see his face.

“Gideon, no two happy endings are alike. You don’t have to define what makes you happy by anyone else’s standards! And it’s no reason to hide that from us. We love you too much to ever take that away from you.”

Tears prickled. Gideon’s lids squeezed them back. “I’m sorry.”

Belle shook her head. “I am, too. I wish I’d said something before so you didn’t have to feel this way.”

“You didn’t do anything, Mum.” He looked at Rumple. “Neither of you did. It’s just hard not seeing other people having a similar experience. If that makes any sense.”

Rumple came over to them, bringing his own warmth as he placed a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “It does. It’s okay, son.”

Dammit, here came the tears again. Even when Gideon screwed his eyes shut, a couple drops were wrung out. Rumple reached around Gideon’s shoulders while Belle wiped his face and pulled down his head so she could kiss his cheek. The three of them stood together for a few minutes, locked in a tangled, melting embrace. Like entwined vines, they resisted the necessity of separation, but with slow effort they extricated themselves.

“So,” Gideon asked, “you’re okay with me dating Roderick?”

Rumple’s mouth twitched. “Well, I still have standards.”

“Rumple,” Belle warned.

“What kind of standards?” Gideon asked warily.

“He has to respect that my son, love-struck as he is, must be home at a reasonable hour to finish his homework and attend to his other responsibilities.”

Belle sighed, shook her head, and smiled. “I suppose I must agree.”

“I think he can handle that.” Gideon’s smile was short lived. “Do you . . . um, should I introduce you?”

“Is he waiting outside?” Rumple asked. Belle’s mouth dropped open.

Gideon looked down. “Yes.”

“Gideon!” cried Belle. “You made him wait outside all this time?”

“No! It was his idea!”

“Bring that poor boy inside. I’ll prepare some tea.”

“Mum, it’s not the middle of winter.”

“That’s not the point,” Belle pressed as she headed for the backroom.

“Your mother is right,” Rumple said. “As responsible parents, we must show him some hospitality while we interrogate him.”

“Papa, don’t!”

Rumple was already headed for the door, wearing a smile far too reminiscent of his impish portrait in Henry’s storybook. Gideon groaned and followed his father and mentally prepared a thorough apology to his boyfriend.


End file.
